9/06/2007

Bush can't recall why the Iraqi Military was disbanded.

From the LA Times

"The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Bush told biographer Robert Draper in excerpts published in Sunday's New York Times.

Draper pressed Bush to explain why, if he wanted to maintain the army, his chief administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, issued an order in May 2003 disbanding the 400,000-strong army without pay.

"Yeah, I can't remember; I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?' " Bush said, adding: "Again, Hadley's got notes on all this stuff" -- a reference to national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley.

It's great that our supposed Commander-in-Chief knows whats going on with his own administration, to the point - that the 'plans' aren't being followed - and we're finding out years later that the President doesn't even know why.

Good to know, especially with the knowledge that: the Joint Chiefs weren't consulted in the decision.

Or how Bremer: told Bush in advance of his plan to disband the Iraqi military.

"We must make it clear to everyone that we mean business: that Saddam and the Baathists are finished," Bremer wrote in a letter to the president on May 22, 2003.

After recounting U.S. efforts to remove members of Saddam's Baath Party from civilian agencies, Bremer told Bush that he would "parallel this step with an even more robust measure" to dismantle the Iraq military.

One day later, Bush wrote back a short thank-you letter. "Your leadership is apparent," the president wrote. "You have quickly made a positive and significant impact. You have my full support and confidence." On the same day, Bremer, in Baghdad, had issued the order disbanding the Iraqi military.

Bush did not mention the order to abolish the military, and the letters do not show that he approved the order or even knew much about it. Bremer referred only fleetingly to his plan midway through his three-page letter and offered no details.

Furthermore:

Bremer indicated he had been smoldering for months as other administration officials had steadily distanced themselves from his order. "This didn't just pop out of my head," he said by telephone Monday, adding that he had sent a draft of the order to top Pentagon officials and discussed it "several times" with Donald Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense.


To me, it sounds like the administration trying to distance itself from what is widely considered a VERY bad decision in regards to the war.

Either that or everyone was drunk at the time. Given the administration, I'm going to go with that.